Fourth fatality in Brussels shooting to be buried in Morocco
Alexandre Strens, 25, died Friday after two weeks in a coma following attack on Jewish museum
The fourth victim in last month’s Brussels Jewish Museum attack was set to be laid to rest in a Muslim cemetery in Morocco on Tuesday afternoon, Belgian media reported.
Alexandre Strens, 25, who worked in the museum’s communications department, was in a coma since the May 24 shooting which claimed the lives of three others, and died on Friday, the public prosecutor’s office said.
His body was airlifted to the city of Taza where he will buried next alongside his grandparents, after an agreement was reached between his mother, who is Jewish, and father, a Kabyle Berber. Strens and his six siblings were raised by his mother.
An Israeli couple, Emanuel and Mira Riva, and a French woman were killed immediately by a lone gunman in the attack. The shooting is suspected to be the work of a 29-year-old Frenchman, Mehdi Nemmouche, who has spent more than a year fighting with radical jihadists in Syria and who was detained days after the shooting.
It was the first such attack in Brussels in three decades, raising fears across Europe of a resurgence of anti-Semitic violence and of terror attacks from foreign fighters returning from Syria.
Nemmouche is being held in detention in France and has fought extradition to Belgium.
Leaders of the G7 industrialized nations this week agreed to work together to tighten defenses against the risk of attacks by European jihadists returning from Syria.
